An Island Called Home: Returning to Jewish Cuba

Chapter 10: The Dancing Turk

[ 108 ] 10 the dancing turk Pilar Little Bermudez hides her years very well. When we go to visit her at her Vedado apartment, she wears a dress with an orchid print, gold earrings, and a gold necklace. Her white hair is freshly brushed. As she says, “Even though I’m ninety, the moment I wake up I get dressed and put on my makeup.” Certainly some of the credit for Pilar’s longevity must go to her daughter, Flor Najmías Little, a retired social worker, who takes impeccable care of her mother. Throughout our conversation, I can’t help noticing how Flor never sits, but stands protectively, like a bodyguard, behind Pilar. “This is everything I could find,” Flor says, pointing to the photographs, passports, citizenship papers, and memorabilia spread out on the dining table. As I sort through it all, Flor remarks, “For the longest time I held on to my father’s comb. It had his hair stuck in it. I held on to it until just the other day. I still have his eyeglasses. My father was Moisés Najmías Maimón. In Turkey the family uses the h and here we use the j in Najmías. My father came to Cuba in May of 1925.” Flor stops herself, realizing suddenly she isn’t being a good host. “Would you like a cafecito?” she asks. We say yes and Flor smiles and disappears into the kitchen. Now Pilar continues with the story. “I was born in 1914,” she says. “My husband was about twenty when he came to Cuba. He was nine years older than me. He was born in 1905, but he always liked to pretend he was younger.” Returning with the coffee, Flor adds, “My father’s father had died of cholera, Behar_3P-02.qxd:Behar design 7/30/07 2:20 PM Page 108 [ 109 ] Havana so his maternal grandfather raised him. He came alone to Cuba. Afterward his brother came, but he didn’t like Cuba and went back to Turkey.” Pilar holds up a picture of herself as a young woman with a young Moisés looking dapper in a white suit. “He was such a good dancer,” Pilar says dreamily. “He loved parties. There used to be a place on the Malecón, near the Hotel Riviera, and I’d go there with a chaperone, because you couldn’t go by yourself in those days.We liked to watch everyone dance. ‘Look at that guy. He’s not Cuban. Look how well he dances to the American songs.’ This was in the late 1930s. Two, three years later I went to the Centro Asturiano.They held dances every Saturday. But I didn’t want to go. I didn’t think anyone who could dance went there. But my mother talked me into it. There I am, standing next to the orchestra when I see him again, all dressed in white. He looks at me and keeps walking. Then he comes back and looks at me again. The third time he holds out his hand. I thought to myself, ‘Well, at least this one will know how to dance.’ And we danced the entire night.” Behar_3P-02.qxd:Behar design 7/30/07 2:20 PM Page 109 Pilar puts on her glasses and examines the picture more carefully. “Oh how the years ravage us!” “When you met him, did you know Moisés was Jewish?” I ask. “I had no idea,” Pilar replies, and adds that they were married in 1943 in a civil wedding. “My father never denied he was Jewish, but he didn’t go to synagogue,” Flor says. “He was poor, but he paid his membership fees at Chevet Ahim. I remember the blue metal cans for Tzedaka. They came around asking for money for charity. He gave all year long.” As a single man, Moisés thought he was free of family pressures when he chose to marry Pilar, a woman not from the Jewish tribe. But the one relative he had in Cuba, a cousin, would not forgive him. Flor tells the story: “He had a cousin whose marriage had been arranged in Turkey. When I was born, my father went to his cousin’s house with the news. This cousin looked at him and said, ‘Was the girl born very retarded?’ She said that because she thought my mother was...